Black Friday, Cyber Monday 2017:Best Ideas & 100 Products to Sell

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are two busiest shopping days of the year. Both set in the United States and became global promotional events. In the article, you will find insights and predictions for Black Friday, Cyber Monday 2017 specifically for dropshipping online stores.

When are Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2017?

Black Friday falls on November 24 and Cyber Monday is on November 27 accordingly this year. Thanksgiving is an official start of Black Friday but many shops launch their deals beforehand. Pre-Black Friday will begin on November 1 which is so really soon!

These two extraordinary days in the shopping calendar provide dropshipping online stores extra special sales growth and increment in profit corresponding just before Christmas.

What Days Shoppers Mostly Spend on Black Friday, Cyber Monday 2017?

This statistic gives information on the 2016 holiday season days with the highest e-commerce spending by U.S. consumers. During the holiday season, Cyber Monday was ranked first with 2.67 billion US dollars in e-commerce expenditure. This may help in planning intension of your work.

Highest U.S. e-commerce spending days during the 2016 holiday season, million U.S. dollars:

Source: Statista.

History of Black Friday

Black Friday is described as a pre-Christmas day of commercial chaos. The term "Black Friday" first appeared back in the 1950s in Philadelphia.

The true story behind Black Friday is not as sunny as retailers might have you believe. Back in the 1950s, police in the city of Philadelphia used the term to describe the chaos that ensued on the day after Thanksgiving, when hordes of suburban shoppers and tourists flooded into the city in advance of the big Army-Navy football game held on that Saturday every year. Not only would Philly cops not be able to take the day off, but they would have to work extra-long shifts dealing with the additional crowds and traffic. Shoplifters would also take advantage of the bedlam in stores to make off with merchandise, adding to the law enforcement headache.

By 1961, "Black Friday" had caught on in Philadelphia, to the extent that the city's merchants and boosters tried unsuccessfully to change it to "Big Friday" in order to remove the negative connotations. Source: History.

Origin of Cyber Monday

"Cyber Monday" is a marketing term for the Monday after the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States.The term "Cyber Monday" was dreamt up in 2005 by a marketing team at Shop.org, a division of the National Retail Federation, to persuade people to shop online. On November 28, 2005, their press release was entitled "'Cyber Monday Quickly Becoming One of the Biggest Online Shopping Days of the Year".

The worst Black Friday violence

The worst Black Friday occurred in 2008 when a man was trampled to death. Despite being 6'5" and 270 pounds, temporary worker Jdimytai Damour died of asphyxiation when crowds stampeded into another Wal-Mart (this time in New York). At least 2,000 people broke down the doors, trapping Damour in a vestibule where he suffocated. Eleven other shoppers were also injured, including a pregnant woman. It seems the police have a right to call Black Friday by a negative name. Source: The balance.

Cities with the highest interest in Black Friday

Westland, MI

Augusta, GA

Louisville, KY

Nashville, TN

Omaha, NE

Source: WebpageFX.

Dark side of Black Friday

12% of shoppers admitted to shopping under the influence of alcohol

10 deaths 105 injuries since 2006

Source: WebpageFX.

Top questions that people ask on Google search

What time do stores open on Black Friday?

What time does Black Friday start?

When does Black Friday end?

What to buy on Black Friday?

Source: WebpageFX.

Shopping on Cyber Monday are geared towards men or women

Men (43%) claim to shop online more than women (39%). Source: TipsyWriter

5 Holiday Shopping Facts Perfectly Sum up Sales for 2017

1

Customer engagement into online spending stably grow every year

This statistic shows the desktop retail e-commerce spending on Thanksgiving Day, Black Friday and Cyber Monday in the United States from 2008 to 2016. The figures represent annual growth of online shopping.

U.S. online revenue on Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2008-2016, million U.S. dollars:

Source: Statista.

CONCLUSION #1: Get in the game as Black Friday and Cyber Monday are kings for online stores.

2

M-commerce grows

This statistic gives information on the percentage of mobile online sales on Black Friday and Cyber Monday from 2012 to 2016. On Black Friday 2016, 48 percent of online orders were generated via mobile devices, up from 40 percent in the previous year.

Share of mobile online sales on Black Friday and Cyber Monday from 2012 to 2016, percentage of sales:

Each of four generations is inspired more by different digital channels

Think what channels to choose? The table depicts what channels were of bigger and smaller importance across all demographics last year. You may see what channels are more influential for a generation you focus on.

How shoppers use digital channels for holiday gifting inspiration, % using channel for inspiration:

The principles for choosing the most suitable channels are the highest level of income and the most involved network.

NRF survey data found that last year nine in 10 shoppers said something convinced them to make a purchase that they may have been hesitant about. Of those who said they were swayed, 64 percent said it was by an offer of free shipping and 50 percent said it was due to a limited-time sale or promotion.

What convinced holiday shoppers to make a purchase?

CONCLUSION #4: Be ready to offer free or inexpensive shipping to motivate consumers to shop.

5

Landing pages help in accurate balance your message in social works with conversion growth

Create and launch a landing page especially for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Here you may see how Amazon and Depot landing pages look:

Left

Right

CONCLUSION #5: Launch a landing page. Possibly you will need landing pages for different product categories.

Proper planning ahead is essential. If you do your homework properly and help your consumers to bag the best deals, your online store will be bombarded with ordered. You need to get prepared already now. As social networks are your key channels, so below you will find four Black Friday/Cyber Monday marketing ideas for your SMM.

Black Friday, Cyber Monday 2017: 4 Best Ideas for SMM

Most tips and recommendations for Black Friday and Cyber Monday are rather uncertain, for instance, use hashtags, write posts about actions. These are the most popular ones but don't sound helpful to force through the noise.

We would like to give you four ideas on holding campaigns in social networks, which will help to increase sales revenue. Surely, it is important what you do but how you bring ideas to life matters too.

1

Black Friday Cyber Monday marketing ideas - Discounts and offers

How to make non-standard discounts for holiday season? How online stores succeed in it?

If you start posting special offers and promote best-selling items, this will result in some sales. But achieving astonishing results demands creative strategy.

Here you may see how Amazon promoted the hottest offers on Facebook:

You may see time next to products as a trigger for sales start:

A discount is active during a limited period of time and ends fast. In addition, the stock is also limited. As you know, big discounts, urgency, and shortage create an atmosphere of Black Friday/Cyber Monday rush.

Chubbiesshorts offered a new gift hours for each purchase during 12 hours.

Their gifts were so really cool that consumers were ready to pay. An additional weighty advantage of this strategy is making consumers return to the website hourly to learn about a new gift.

Chubbies Shorts

Video from the official channel

2

Black Friday Cyber Monday marketing ideas -Livestream

According to Facebook statistics, users watch live video streaming 3 times more than traditional video and comment them 10 times more.

E-retailer MeUndies hosted a successful Facebook live event last year. To promote the hour-long live event, MeUndies first sent out invites to its 314,000 followers and then ran a Facebook event ad targeting customers who opened MeUndies emails but hadn't made a purchase in over a year.

In the end, MeUndies attracted 13,300 viewers and scored a conversion rate of 25%, 13 times the average rate that MeUndies usually get on Facebook.

This live event is illustrative of how brands can use live streaming as a direct sales channel to pitch to a captivated audience in real time and drive conversion.

3

Black Friday Cyber Monday marketing ideas - Targeted Advertising

Here is an example of a two-step retargeted advertising campaign that will help you to maximise your income during Black Friday Cyber Monday 2017.

First, set your advertising to focus on your core audience (preliminary analyses of your core audience is a must):

Set limit 20-50 U.S. dollars per day. 10-20 U.S. dollars is usually set for the testing period. 30-50 U.S. dollars is normal for those banners and video that successfully passed testing and showed the best results.

Make a retargeting ad campaign to increase traffic to your website. Set visibility of your ads to the audience that watched 50-75% of video or liked your carousel.

Create one more retargeting campaign based on a Facebook pixel after Black Friday/Cyber Monday. You may focus on the customers who purchased your goods to continue offering your products. Or, target on those guys who added items to the cart but didn't purchase them. Plus, you may focus on visitors of your website.

You may also create a lookalike audience based on a Facebook pixel data. This may help to increase outreach even more.

4

Humor

No doubt humor has a great potential to drive conversion. Here are the reasons:

Humor attracts attention, especially in social media. "Jokes work because they defy expectations. The surprising aspect of these tales kicks in the frontal lobe's search for pattern recognition. The punchline moment shifts one's orientation away from information processing toward an emotional response arising deep within the nucleus accumbens." written in "The Harvard Mahoney Neuroscience Institute Letter". As humor is unexpected in advertising, jokes energize it.

Funny content makes people to be involved in a sales process. According to a 1993 Journal of Marketing study that examined multinational effects of humor on advertising, the major conclusion was that "humorous advertising is more likely to secure audience attention, increase memorability, overcome sales resistance, and enhance message persuasiveness". Humor breaks resistance to the influence of advertisements.

Be attentive, "humor in advertising is like a gun in the hands of a child. You have to know how to use it. Otherwise, it can blow up on you" (Julia Miller). Surely, timely jokes, in particular, do marvels.

Here are examples of Amazon jokes:

There are thousands of comments and they are funny too:

“

If you look at space companies, they've failed either because they've had a technical solution where success was not a possible outcome, they were unable to attract a critical mass of talent, or they just ran out of money. The finish line is usually a lot further away than you think.

Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX

Customer engagement into Black Friday Cyber Monday online sales has reached a large scale and moreover, it annually deepens. Extend beyond your regular instruments to explore new horizons of global sales. Below you will find promising product categories and dropshipping niche ideas, as well as the specially selected list of 100 trending items as your profit contributors for Black Friday Cyber Monday 2017.

Most Trending Product Categories

Below there are the most popular Black Friday/Cyber Monday product categories which as you may see contain not only smartphones, laptops, TVs and this kind of stuff. You, being a dropshipping store owner, have all the chances to increase your sales while the holiday season.

Electronics:

Androids

Cameras

Headphones

Smartwatch

Fitness trackers

Action cameras

Smart scale

iPhones

Speakers

Gaming consoles

Dog cameras

TVs

Computers:

iPads/Tablets

Data storage/Power banks

Laptops

Entertainment:

Movies, etc.

Toys

Travel

Video games

Home & Garden:

Appliance

Kitchen

Tools

Vacuum cleaners

Clothing & Beauty:

Clothing

Shoes

Beauty

100 Best-Selling Items - Predictions for BF&CM 2017

According to the specialists' research, large retailers increase sales by 50-100% compared to other days, while smaller online stores achieve sales growth by 400-600%.

Import these products to fill your store with enticing and can't-miss items.